::
Describe a moment of beauty that you witnessed this year.
::
so much
of life’s beauty
can be found
dancing
in the
shadows.
::
:
I stand in the back yard at dawn
and breathe in the color of life.
I am circle, I am square,
I am curve and zig zag.
I hear only sounds of nature,
birds calling,
leaves rustling,
wind whispering.
There are no secrets here,
in this morning.
Everything I see is preparing for winter,
each in its own pragmatic way.
The kiss of frost
kills softly,
softly.
I am hollow.
I am empty.
I am taken.
::
it’s a plane…
it’s the place where
all that treasure
is buried in the sky…
::
tell me,
what do you see?
the other night i was on the couch and my daughter,
who lives three hours away, sent me a text.
“can you see the moon?”
it was the moon in this picture but about three hours later.
and that moon, the one that she sent me the text about,
hanging low in the sky like a perfect golden pendant,
was so worth getting up off the couch to see.
but mostly, i loved that she knew that,
and thought of me.
a moonlit night
forsaken on a bed
of wilt and roses
ophelia
we loved you all
dancing in the pale
silver spotlight
singing in the breeze
of your reflection
seeking love’s own touch
beneath the darkness
:: :: ::
A poem I wrote 25 years ago,
25 years of life and love and living
and the words still ring true,
still fit, perfectly.
So I wear them this day, this day to
Just sit there and look pretty
having never felt pretty, never thought of myself like that
never just sat there either, always got up
always was the butterfly, no, the bee
head down, gathering bits of honey
working hard to add some sweet
to a slightly bitter world.
:
:: :: ::
.
this post is part of the just sit there and look pretty challenge.
go here to see all the pretties…
listening.
:: :: ::
today I am over at the Inspiration Studio
listening to my heart
won’t you join me?
there are days when i whine
and days when i cry
and days when the world tastes bitter.
but the thing i love best
about this mad life
is that just after one of those days
you might just wake up
to one of these days.
summer again
yesterday’s cool breezes just a tease
waves of heat that whisper and shimmer
humidity dancing in a twenties flapper dress
and these dried out flowers that periscope up
to keep one eye on winter
setting seed for birds that will shiver
in the light of tomorrow’s dawn.
I sit here, needing something, but I am speechless.
I have spent another day running around in circles. Some of them were good circles, some of them were too constraining. Some of them weren’t circles at all, they were spirals. I have so much to do that I can’t concentrate on anything, and for some reason, I am exhausted. I have a show this weekend, I have to work, have to make ready, have to do this, have to do that.
But I sit here. Hoping that if I get the words out, something will change. Hoping it is the words, all jumbled up inside, causing this inability to focus. Hoping.
I am outside, it is almost dusk, the air is still. My mind is not.
My mind is like these mosquitoes that are about to drive me inside. Pesky, buzzing, flittering, fluttering. Annoying.
If I sit here long enough, I wonder if my mind will become as calm as the air. I hear birds. Crickets. Peeping frogs. No grasshoppers just now, perhaps they are already asleep. The fading sunlight filters through the long row of bushes that hides me from my neighbors, my far-away neighbors that I still wish to be hidden from.
At the end of that row is the elderberry bush, bent low to the ground with the weight of its fruit, full and ripe. I feel like that too, just now. Heavy with my own potential.
I should get up and get my camera so I can take a picture of this abstract watercolor sky. But I feel too tired. I don’t have the energy. If I go inside to get my camera, I don’t think I’ll come back out.
Inside, the fans are still going. Outside, the air is perfectly still.
It has been like that since this morning.
I think I just need to sit here for a bit
and enjoy this breeze of silence.
:
p.s. I came back out.
You can’t write about silence because it doesn’t exist. It pretends to exist, we talk about it, we yearn for it, we aspire to it, but life is never truly silent. There is always something making sound, your heart beating, your lungs breathing, there is always a whisper of life, somewhere.
My mind is never quiet. I have never been able to meditate, to completely clear my thoughts, there is always some phrase or idea that raises its hand and waves for my attention. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, although sometimes I do wish that they would all just sit down and read for a while. Or take a little nap.
But mostly I like that my mind moves in circles, thoughts flowing in and out and around, and then back again, sometimes when I least expect them. I like that a line for a poem can just appear, on a page that my brain has already printed. I like that words are perpetual, always there, my constant companions.
Yes, peace and quiet sound really nice, I wish for both fairly often, but in truth I would probably get bored.
I like to stay up, alone, when everyone else is sleeping, I like the way the house sounds when my husband and son are here and asleep, it is a different sound than when I am home by myself. Even though I can’t really hear anything, I can sense their presence within the quiet. Perhaps it is the peace of their sleep that I feel, palpable evidence of their dreams.
Sound travels further at night, and our dreams entwine themselves around what we hear and tell us the story of that noise, this whisper. They (the proverbial they) say that dreams don’t really play out as stories, that they are just flashes in our brains, synapses, individual thoughts or images that our mind strings together later, and then adds meaning. I’m not sure I believe that.
I think dreams are stories that need to be told.
Poems are emotions that struggle to exist.
Words and images are the conduits.
Silence can exist, in a vacuum. But I am not there.
